Playing Around in InDesign

Last night I decided I wanted to play around in InDesign a little bit and create a quote block that I could print out on nice paper and frame. You've probably seen those quote blocks that have each line a different size and they are justified to make a perfect square. 

So I got into InDesign and I started playing around with fonts, font size, kearning, etc. But I couldn't figure out how to make it look right. Well, this meant bringing out the big guns (ie, Daddy) to teach me how to do it. 

I had the right idea, but he taught me a few more things I needed to use to make this:

This is an 8 1/2" by 8 1/2" (or 51 picas by 51 picas). The quote font is aquaduct, and the signature is from a free Jane Austen font I found on the internet. I found the silhouette by typing in "Jane Austen silhouette" on google images and downloading the highest quality one.

First, make sure you have a hard return at the end of every line. I decided what words I wanted to really stand out (gentleman, lady, pleasure, stupid) and made sure they were on their own lines. I also but two spaces between each word on a line. Then for each line, you play with the font size until every just fits on the line without a word, or part of a word, being forced off. Next, you use the horizontal scale. This will stretch out your words a bit. I really can't think of any rhyme or reason to this, I just did it until it looked right (a professional typographer might have a problem with me saying that. :) ). Then it's time for the vertical scale. This will stretch your words upward. After you do that with every line, play with the leading--this is very necessary. Before I fixed the leading the lines were very far apart.

This creates such a fun little quote block, and once you know how to do it, it really doesn't take a lot of time! I'm even thinking of making this for wedding gifts, etc. You just get some scrapbook paper, print this out on one sheet, glue that on another sheet, and frame it!